u/TheMadQueen96

Hey all.

It's your girl, the autistic useless lesbian.

I want to get one thing out of the way:

I *do* see myself as a likeable person.

I *do* like how I look.

But I'm just incapable of attracting other people. I am not physically attractive to others.

I attract two types of people primarily.

One is people who have a fetish for girls like me.

The other are people who look at my personality and want me to "rescue" them. I am a "caregiver" type.

In the past, I also used to attract people who were very manipulative and outright dangerous, but that changed overtime as I grew in confidence and established firm boundaries. I'm less of a "target" for them.

I've never been flirted with since I started living as a woman, at least not in a legitimate way. People have pretended to flirt with me as a joke, or again have fallen into one of the bad categories I've mentioned.

This well, sucks. It really sucks.

And I'm not sure how to deal with it.

I've abandoned ideas like dating altogether for this reason. Just incapable of attracting people who have good intentions for me, and that's kinda always been the case.

I'm struggling a bit with my sexuality. Now, I know full well that I like other women but what I'm having a hard time navigating is finding I guess, joy or anything positive at all in my sexual identity.

I've got trans joy nailed down to a tee, even in such pressing times where it feels like half the country is gunning for you and the other half is indifferent to such treatment. If anything, finding trans joy is an act of rebellion against this country that hates people like me as much as it loves beans on toast.

To cut to the chase, my first lesbian experience was beyond horrific. I will spare you the full gritty details but, it was total Hell and I did almost lose my life.

The reason I'm still standing is a lot of self-therapy (I didn't and still don't have access to good therapy) and a supportive network of friends. I still get the odd nightmare or panic attack but I think I'm as okay as I'm gonna be from the experiences.

It was a long road. And I almost fell off it several times.

But here's the thing: Because that was my first lesbian experience, it's dominated my lesbian existence entirely. I made the mistake of rushing into another relationship after getting away from that stuff and that obviously ended in tears.

Beyond that, I haven't actually had any lesbian experiences since, beyond a drunken snog at a nightclub last year.

I did try getting back on the dating apps not that long ago but it wasn't good. Nothing came of it. Just a lot of men fetishizing me to the moon and back begging for sex and a lot of fake profiles.

So, I feel joyless. Like, utterly joyless in my sexual identity. I want to be able to embrace lesbianism in the same way (or if not, then at least on the same wavelength) that I did transness and being a woman.

While transness and being a woman come with their challenges, especially in the current climate, I still find joy. I find positives to hold onto and keep me going.

I don't have any positives I could tie to being gay.

What I'm realising I need is a "reset" of sorts. A way of finding some level of joy in my sexuality.

The most common advice would be to join or seek out lesbian community, but sadly in my part of the UK, I haven't found any genuinely inclusive lesbian spaces.

The active ones aren't fond of trans women like myself. It's not always blatantly hostile and for the most part, they kinda pretend to be accepting. It's often a case of, if you encounter hostility they tell you to get out rather than address the people screaming at you, threatening you etc.

You being made to feel unsafe is treated as a you problem. You don't really matter. You're not seen as "real" and your allowance into the space is very conditional.

The spaces that are more inclusive, they only really run an event maybe once every few years. It's a pop-up thing you can't depend on for community

As for "If you build it they will come." approach, which would be me starting and running my own space, I'm not the right person for that. How could someone who doesn't even know how to be a lesbian, run a lesbian space/event? You get me?

People have also suggested trying to embrace my lesbian identity while embracing gender identity, make it be an interconnected thing. But, I can't frame experiences that cause gender euphoria into "Sapphic joy" because it doesn’t feel interconnected to me

It almost feels like my sexual identity and gender identity are separate things. I know it's not that way for a lot of folks, but that's just how it is on my end.

If anything, I embraced the joy around gender even more because of not being able to embrace joy in sexuality. Trying to find the joy in aspects of identity that I could to balance the scales a little.

So stuff that'd bring euphoria via gender expression for instance just doesn't feel "lesbian" to me.

I have no idea how to live as a gay woman in the sense that I don't know how to enjoy it. I've kinda had my years since coming out as gay dominated by bad relationships and exclusion from local community.

I never had a chance to figure it out. I was still figuring out the gender stuff when I got into that awful relationship so, yeah...

I know I'm not the first lesbian in history to need guidance on a "reset" of sorts. Heck, I doubt I'm the first lesbian seeking "reset" after having gone through those awful experiences I mentioned.

I have no idea what I'm doing.

But what I do know is I'm not gonna let my lesbian existence be defined by that awful stuff anymore.

It's time to start over.

I just don't know how.

I'm not asking for advice on how to date other women or signposting on a lesbian space that actually accepts women like me. I've kinda been hurt a little bit too much by both to give either another try, that's all.

I've kinda made my peace (or I'm trying to make my peace) with the lack of acceptance and that romantic relationships just aren't something I get to have.

So, I', asking if there's any way I can find joy or something nice about being gay that isn't tied to dating or community, because those are things that have hurt me and have led to me kinda associating my lesbian identity as something negative.

And I want to be able to celebrate it. Be proud. Or at least feel comfortable with it.